Printing medium



March 27, 1945. J KOHLER 2,372,209

PRINTING MEDIA Filed Aug. 31, 1940 Patented Mar. 27, 1945 PRINTING MEDIUM John Kohler, Hartford, Conn., assignor to M.

Swift & cut

Sons, Inc., a corporation of Connecti- Application August 31, 1940, Serial No. 355,001 4 Claims. (01. 41-33) wooden articles with or without lacquered and varnished surfaces, such as lead pencils, wood handles, plastics, and the like.

It is a further object of my invention to provide a printing medium which may produce a printed efiect in color on surfaces which do not readily retain printer's ink.

Another object of my invention is to obtain an embossed printing on difilcult materials so as to produce a pressed effect,

Still another .object is to increase the speed of printing by providing a printing procedure which produces a dry printed impression at once.

Further objects of my invention are to utilize printing media which lend themselves to the production of unusual effects, such as fluorescent effects at night, and multiple color efiects with a single impression.

With the above and other objects and advantageous results in view, my invention consists 01 a novel printing method and a novel arrangement of parts more fully disclosed in the detailed I description following, in conjunction with the accompanying drawing, and more specifically defined in the claims appended thereto.

In the drawing, the figure is a perspective view, broken away to show the constituent parts of the novel printing medium, illustrated as a printing strip l comprising a carrier strip H of any suitable material such as glassine paper, "Cellopha'ne, cellulose acetate, or the like, having a layer [2 of. releasable composition thereon, such as wax, a layer l3 of powder thereon, the powder being preferably transparent, and an outer layer H of sizing, which is preferably heavily dyed or pigmented if desired, the thickness of the layer being shown exaggerated.

The essence of the invention resides in the use of the layer of powder, which makes a weak separating plane which has no film strength and therefore breaks clean and sharp under an imcleavagelayer to ensure full retention of the sizing dye or pigment on the imprinted surface. I have found that ground mica is very suitable for the desired purpose, but any suitable powder may be'used which has the property of being insoluble in the wax and in the sizing, to thus prevent mixing of the sizing and the wax, whereby a heavy coat of sizing is feasible, which may be readily dyed or pigmented, the powder acting as preservative coating. The heated die imprints through the wax and powder and melts the sizing and releases the pigment to form the imprinted design, the powder cleaving to produce a clean cut release, and in practice actually splitting to coat both the wax and the released pigment.

Powdered mica makes a very effective frangible separator, as the mica is in flake form and does not pile up in bunches or clumps, thus af ford ing full coverage with a thin layer. The mica flakes are also shiny, which-is an advantage, and are transparent, which is preferred, as some of the powder will stick to the sizing; transparent powder will not change the appearance of the dye or pigment, which forms the completed printed impression.

The preferred dyes and pigments are basic, with no fixing agents'or mordants; soluble dyes must be soluble in the same solvent that the sizing base dissolves in, an illustrative sizing being shellac plus natural gums, and a suitable solvent for such a sizing being alcohol, the dry concentrated soluble dye stufi being dissolved in the solvent, and added to the sizing. Insoluble dyes may be used as pigments or with pigments.

The above-described arrangement for a printing medium permits sharp, clean-cut printing on materials which do not take printers ink. The cleavage powder is more effective than a continuous material strip separator, which will not break sharply. The thickness of the wax layer should not be excessive, as the dye stuff or pig-' ment will spread; although a light coat of dye stuff or pigment is preferred, even a heavy coat will break clean, with no tendency to swing back to stick to the wax layer and the carrier strip.

' The above-described arrangements may be readily varied to produce unusual and striking printing stroke, and thus may be defined as a to printed efiects. Thus, the colored dyes or pigments may be in layers, or several colors may be used in the same strip; and fluorescent dyes or pigments may be used to obtain striking night effects. If a female die be used in conjunction with a male die for imprinting, an embossing effeet of great beauty results. Other variations for specific efiects will be readily apparent to those skilled in the art.

While I have described specific constructional embodiments of my invention, it is obvious that the materials and their arran ement may be changed to suit the requirements for different printing efiects, without departing from the spirit and the scope of the invention as defined in the appended claims.

I claim:

1. A printing medium comprising a carrier strip, a coat of releasable material thereon, a layer of mica powder thereon, and a printing layer of color material and sizing thereon.

2. A printing medium comprising a carrier 15 JOHN KOHLER. 

